The Organ Games

Chapter 1

Life seems to be unfair in most people's lives, no matter how good, upright, and law-abiding they are. Life just smacks them in the face and leaves them choked with its smoky toxic fumes. This is a story of fifty people from different sorts of lives sprung across the fifty states of the United States of America. They all have two things in common: their loved ones are dying and they are below the donor list.

Organ transplant is one of the most expensive health services in health care. Only a few can afford it, and most insurance companies do not cover it. The rich seem to be on top of the list, but what happens to the poor or middle-income families that cannot afford it? Do they just sit around and wait for their loved ones to die if a donor can't be found or they are below the waiting list?

***************         

Washington State 10:00 am

The ruffle of water against the metal sink was all the 31-year-old banker, David, could register about his surroundings. His coworker stood at the door trying to get his attention, but he was in his own world.

 His wife was dying, and there was nothing he could do about it. What hurt the most was the fact that it was all his fault. He cut off her medical insurance. He was in a lot of debt and could not afford payments for both his and her full term, so he stopped paying with the hope of resuming the payments after he sorted out his debt, but disaster struck. With a heart problem developing, with no cover and no money, his wife was only hanging on.

He could only watch as the health system fucked him up just like he had fucked his wife's insurance.

In the weeks that followed, her condition got so bad that she needed a transplant. Without insurance, David knew she was below the donor list and there was nothing he could do but just watch her dying. 

The guilt was eating him up. He could barely look at himself in the mirror. The ring that kept ringing in his head, dragging him back to the thoughts that drowned him every day, was "I killed her."

"David!" his colleague yelled out, snapping him out of his thoughts. He turned and apologized. The colleague handed him some files while staring at him with raised eyebrows.

He looked like a ghost, lost in his misery. He had not had a proper meal for days or had a proper bath. "The boss said you should finish these files," the co-worker said, minding his own business.

The entire office was aware of his wife's condition, but all they could do was offer some words of hope or courage. He needed to do his part at the firm, but there was only so much that they could do.

David turned off the water and grabbed the files. He needed to work for the money. His useless boss could not even cut him some slack with all the salary advances he got.

He walked back to his desk, trying not to think. It was the thought that kept reminding him of how badly he screwed up. The mountain of work was not that bad; it helped him forget the hell that he was in.    

           

Louisiana State

But David was not alone in his hell; there was always someone somewhere going through a similar situation. A situation were one is pushed to the wall with no hope. With her son lying on her lap, Caroline, a 27-year-old single mother, could not help but cry. It was her new hobby. Her eyes had changed color and were very swollen from the constant crying.

Her son was only ten; he was all she had, but it appeared like he was going to leave her after all the hell they went through and beating cancer. Some weeks ago, she thought she was going to take him home. She thought they were going to start a new life, but she was slapped with bad news. 

Her son's lungs collapsed, and after the little hope she was given, it was snatched and smacked in her face. 

Where was her son going to get a new set of lungs? She had no idea there was even a transplant for lungs. It was the first time she heard of such a transplant. She was just a single parent, working five jobs to meet her son's medical expenses.

But she knew those covers were not going to produce a new set of lungs for her son. An organ transplant was not on the cover list. She knew that her son was way below the list and that there was nothing she could do but weep miserably. She kept asking herself what crime she committed or was it her son who committed the crime.  

What made her situation even sadder was her son's age, health history, and size. No hospital in their right mind would cover the cost of a tiny cancer patient. They hinted that children rarely donated organs, so whatever few organs most hospitals harvested were prioritized for healthy children or children who had a high percentage of living. Her son was graded below a one, they said he had zero a percentage of surviving the surgery.

The physicians advised her to say farewell to him without shame, but she was one of those people who believed in miracles. She had to hope, and she wasn't going to lose hope, as she hadn't when he was originally diagnosed with cancer.

Alabama State  

Across the country in Alabama was George, a 78-year-old man in a similar predicament, a very religious man, married for forty years. Those forty years were the happiest years of his life until his wife, Betty, was diagnosed with kidney failure. She was dying. She too needed a kidney, but the old man could not afford it. She was way below the list; the doctors told him she was too old. She was 77 years old and was placed at the bottom of the donor list. 

He volunteered to donate one of his kidneys, but they said he was just too old to donate. It was too risky, they told him, he was going to die, but George did not mind. He wanted Sandy to live. His entire life revolved around her; she was his everything, but death was eager to separate the two. 

How was he going to live without her? He was so pissed at the doctors. Sandy was not some type of trash to throw away like garbage.

Every morning he sat at the hospital administrator's doorway demanding that policies be changed. Every human mattered, no matter the age, but his pleas always landed on deaf ears. All he attracted were guards throwing him out of the hospital and a restraining order against him.

He was a hopeless man, forced to watch his precious Sandy die.

Texas State

West of Alabama, Berth sat in her daughter's bedroom. A widow and single mother who always believed what a man could do, a woman could do better. She was 30 years old, raising a child alone and looking after hectares of farmland left to her by her late husband.

At least she thought it came naturally. But that one night, when she thought her daughter Paige was inside the house, the four-year-old was actually behind her, and when she started her tractor, the plow dislodged, hooking her in the face while the silage scraped and disfigured the little girl's face. 

By the time Berth stopped the engine, it was too late. Berth had screamed her head off. No mother would stomach what she saw, and what hurt most was the fact that she did it to her daughter.

Months in hospital, hundreds of stitches on her daughter's face, but all she saw were all the nasty names her daughter would be subjected to at the school playground.

 The little angel was completely disfigured and left looking like a character in one of those horror movies. The doctors proposed a facial transplant, but she could not afford the procedure.

She couldn't even sell her land because of the conflicts with her father-in-law, who hated her and was against the marriage to her son. The old man blocked every sale with his influence, and going behind his back meant getting the land for a small change that could not even cover the costs.

The old man blamed her for her husband's death and was keen on making her life miserable. He didn't care about his granddaughter; all he wanted was to see her suffer and pay for what he had tamed.

All she was left with was to wait for a billing plan from the hospital. She expected them to offer her a plan or consider her daughter's age, but they informed her that she had to wait on the list. She knew what that meant; the other kids on the list were from rich families. Her daughter was from a poor family, so plan B was to work hard and save for the procedure while her daughter hid in her house away from cruel judging eyes.

*********